Beachcomber: 101 years old and still ticking along extensively...

WHAT do under-valuation of house prices, Steven Gerrard, the ageing Irish population, the loan market and teenagers’ mental health problems have in common? Answer: they have all been described, in the last couple of weeks, as “ticking time bombs”, a topic which is causing growing political debate following the publication, under the Freedom of Time Bomb Information Act, of figures so far this year.

PUBLISHED: PUBLISHED: 05:40, Wed, Sep 12, 2018

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The phrase “ticking time bomb” has been recorded 134 times in the national press since January 1, 2018 compared with 166 over the same period last year.

The government has described this as a great success for their time bomb reduction strategy, but critics of the scheme say it is evidence of the exact opposite.

“The figures speak for themselves,” the Minister for Time Bombs said.

“By the end of the year, if the current trend continues, we will have had 192.6 ticking time bombs in 2018 compared with a total of 235 in the preceding year. This represents an 18 per cent reduction in ticking time bombs which I think is a source of relief to many.”

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The minister’s statement, however, was described as “a deliberate misinterpretation of the figures” and “unbelievably complacent” by an opposition spokesman.

“The question he does not even address,” he said, “is what has happened to the 32 time bombs that were ticking last year but are no longer doing so. Either they have exploded or they have been replaced by far more dangerous time bombs that do not tick, and therefore give us no warning of their presence.”

The General Secretary of BoMaTiDe, the Bomb Makers and Ticking Devices union, added his voice to the criticism of the Minister, describing the matter as “an explosive issue” for his members.

“We are alarmed at the apparent decrease in ticking time bombs which is causing layoffs throughout the industry,” he said.

The minister, however, retorted by quoting the figures for earlier years.

“We must remember,” he said, “that even as recently as 2011, there were only 87 mentions of ticking time bombs in the national press for the entire year.

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This rose to 206 in 2012 and 235 in 2013. There was a reduction to 179 in both 2014 and 2015, but the figure rose to 215 in 2016 and equalled the record of 235 in 2017.

Your members may be congratulating themselves on their sales figures, but the fact remains that bombs, whether ticking or not, are a potential danger to the nation.

On January 1, we introduced legislation to make it compulsory for all bombs to carry, on their outer casings, prominent warnings that they can be harmful to health, and we are delighted that figures for ticking bombs are already beginning to fall.”

Donald Trump, however, has already announced his intention to withdraw from the IATB (International Accord for Ticking Bombs) which he described as anti-American on the grounds that the US has more bombs that anyone else “and we’re not going to give health warnings or make them tick, at least until the North Koreans do the same.”